News and comment about DC and other urban areas for non-colonials from the Progressive Review, edited by Washington native Sam Smith, who has covered national and local DC since 1957, written four books and helped to start various national and local organizations including the DC Statehood Party, DC Humanities Council and the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. He wrote the article that led to the creation of the DC statehood movement

Tuesday, October 28

Laura Clark, Daily Mail UK - Bright teenagers are a disappearing breed, an alarming new study has revealed. The intellectual ability of the country's cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools. The 'high-level thinking' skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976. The findings contradict national results which have shown a growth in top grades in SATs at 14, GCSEs and A-levels.

The intelligence of Britain's youth is being dumbed down, which experts say is down to television and video games. Posed by model. But Michael Shayer, the professor of applied psychology who led the study, believes that is the result of exam standards 'edging down'.

His team of researchers at London's King's College tested 800 13 and 14-year-olds and compared the results with a similar exercise in 1976.

The tests were intended to measure understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight, which set pupils up for success not only in maths and science but also in English and history.

One test asked pupils to study a pendulum swinging on a string and investigate the factors that cause it to change speed. A second involved weights on a beam.

In the pendulum test, average achievement was much the same as in 1976.

But the proportion of teenagers reaching top grades, demanding a 'higher level of thinking', slumped dramatically.

Just over one in ten were at that level, down from one in four in 1976.

In the second test, assessing mathematical thinking skills, just one in 20 pupils were achieving the high grades - down from one in five in 1976.

Professor Shayer said: 'The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. 'It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves.'

He believes most of the downturn has occurred over the last ten to 15 years.

It may have been hastened by the introduction of national curriculum testing and accompanying targets, which have cut the time available for teaching which develops more advanced skills.

Critics say schools concentrate instead on drilling children for the tests.

'The moment you introduce targets, people will find the most economical strategies to achieve them,' said Professor Shayer.

A study found the high-level thinking skills of 14-year-olds are now on par with a 12-year-old in 1976. . .

Professor Shayer believes the decline in brainpower is also linked to changes in children's leisure activities.

The advent of multi-channel TV has encouraged passive viewing while computer games, particularly for boys, are feared to have supplanted time spent playing with tools, gadgets and other mechanisms. . .

Previous research by Professor Shayer has shown that 11-year-olds' grasp of concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight appears to have declined over the last 30 years.

Their mental abilities were up to three years behind youngsters tested in in 1975.

His latest findings, due to appear in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, come in the wake of a report by Dr Aric Sigman which linked the decline in intellectual ability to a shift away from art and craft skills in both schools and the home.

Dr Sigman said practical activities such as building models and sandcastles, making dens, using tools, playing with building blocks, knitting, sewing and woodwork were being neglected. Yet they helped develop vital skills such as understanding dimension, volume and density.

Last month an Ofsted report said millions of teenagers were finishing compulsory education with a weak grasp of maths because half of the country's schools fail to teach the subject as well as they could. Inspectors said teachers were increasingly drilling pupils to pass exams instead of encouraging them to understand crucial concepts.

We proposed that DC become a state, an article that led to the
creation of the DC Statehood Party. Years later both the Washington
Post and the NY Times editorially endorsed the idea.

We argued that the historic buildings on and around Pennsylvania
Avenue (running from the White House to the Capitol) should be
saved contrary to official plans of the time. These plans were
eventually reversed and the buildings were saved.

We published an expose of DC property tax assessments that helped
spur a successful class action suit changing the way property
is assessed.

In the 1960s we proposed neighborhood councils similar to the
ones DC would get in 1974.

In the 1970s we ran a ground-breaking article on problems of
city's latinos.

We proposed bikeways in the 1960s.

We proposed community policing in the 1960s

We opposed and helped stop the planned freeway system that would
have made DC like an east coast Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1970s, we argued that the war on drugs would
not work. It hasn't.

We argued for light rail and other transit alternatives in the
1970s that were later widely adopted.

Your editor has been a
musician for many decades. He started the first band his Quaker
school ever had and played drums with bands up until 1980 when
he switched to stride piano. He had his own band until the mid-1990s
and has played with the New Sunshine Jazz Band, Hill City Jazz
Band, Not So Modern Jazz Band and the Phoenix Jazz Band.

APEX BLUESSam
playing with the Phoenix Jazz Band at the Central Ohio Jazz festival
in 1990. Joining the band is George James on sax. James, then
84, had been a member of the Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller
orchestras and hadappeared on some 60 records.More
notes on James